About this title: Twain spent seven years writing HUCKLEBERRY FINN--the book Hemingway claimed is the basis for all American fiction. The story of Huck's and Jim's quest for freedom on a raft on the Mississippi provides a panoramic view of Southern society, which Twain saw as beset by greed, violence, and coldhearted brutality in the guise of virtue. At the end of the book, Huck definitively abandons the hypocrisy and cant on which he has been raised when he makes the shocking decision to go to hell rather than betray his friend Jim and send him back to slavery. The book has been banned from time to time, ...
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Publishing
Date Published: 09/2009
ISBN-13:9780766607200ISBN:0766607208
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 4 vols. Contains: Illustrations. read more
"Of all the endings possible for 'Huckleberry Finn,' only one would have made any sense. My own, uneducated guess is that Mark Twain didn't want (or didn't have the courage) to go that way, so he tacked on a resolution clapped together from maudlin slop and preposterous coincidence. When I put my mean eye on 'Huck Finn,' I can literally see where the fix was thrown in. It couldn't be clearer had the author drawn a line across the bottom of chapter 31.
Thus what might have been one of the world's great tragedies became what is yet one of the world's great pieces of kiddie lit. The world declares it so and so it will remain, which is some consolation because the book remains a tragedy of a sort.
The world needs kiddie lit, whether adults enjoy it or not. That's why 'Huckleberry Finn' will outlast ten thousand writers like me. It will survive all attempts to pry it out of its place in the canon and future generations will have to suffer that awful resolution just as I did. Most people don't notice anything wrong with it, anyway.
The upshot is that 'Huck Finn' is immortal: it is a thing like warfare or venereal disease. And if (unlike most Americans) you've read all of Mark Twain, you know the old geezer would have chortled at and cherished that thought.
When I was a lad of nine years, I'd have rated "Huckleberry Finn" at six stars, my logic then being that five were not enough. Today, 61 years old, getting on toward the end of a hard life, I give it three stars for the three fourths of the book that are truly superb. The rest of it is goo."
"Don't get me wrong, Twain's a good writer, but calling this book the foundation of American literature is perhaps going a bit far in the praise department. Twain's address of race and youth in pre-Civil War Mississippi is a thought-provoking message for adults, but this books maybe isn't the children's book that it's been labeled as. Aside from the "N" word that covers every page, the very portrayal of Jim the runaway slave is awkward for those not of white descent. The story, also, descends into the kind of farcical rudeness that Tom Sawyer is famous for, so it's not exactly an idea adult book either. My advice is to buy it for your kid before they go to college and advise them to not bother reading anything past chapter 10. Then again, it's one of those books that you "ought" to read, so . . ."
Have you ever had to read a book for school and there wasn't any if, ands, or buts about it? Well let me tell you the truth I have, the book was called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.I really didn't like this book, you know when you're reading a book and you really can't understand the grammar or language because there's a lot of slang. Another reason why I didn't like this book was the characters like a book can have its main characters but you can't tell who is who. Furthermore my reason last reason on why I didn't like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book was just plain on confusing to me when something can be happening then just like that something else can happens. My first reason why I didn't like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, because I had a hard time understanding the grammar and or language for example in chapter 8 I Spare Miss Watson's Jim "Doan hurt me-don't! I haint ever done no harm to a ghos."see what I mean from reading this, there was a tongue twist. My second reason was the characters the first character was Miss Watson in this book slave's weren't able to learn how to read or write just because Jim wanted to know how to read and write there's nothing wrong with that she didn't want him to know because no one in his family knew how so she made him stop. The second character was Huckleberry Finn father Pap he was a junky all he did was drink and then try to kill Huck "he chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he was going to kill me, and then I couldn't come for him any more. I begged and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed such a screechy laugh and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up." Last character was Huckleberry Finn if you talked about Pap you have to talk about Huckleberry Finn. He was confused about if him and Jim were best friends or not one minute they were, then the next minute they wasn't. At one point he was going to tell on Jim. "then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on;s'pose you'd 'a' done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd fell bad-I'd feel just the same way I do now. "Well, then says I, whats the use you learning to do when its wrong its troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and wages is just the same? I was stuck." My final reason was this book was just plain confusing. To many parts in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would happen at once, you could be reading about a character then next thing you know you'll reading about a different character also why this book was confusing I couldn't tell which character was who. Sometimes I would think that Huckleberry Finn was Jim when Jim is black and Huckleberry Finn was white, when I was really confused every time they brought up the name Tom Sawyer."
"Hemingway said American fiction begins and ends with Huck Finn, and he's right. Twain's most famous novel is a tour de force. He delves into issues such as racism, friendship, war, religion, and freedom with an uncanny combination of lightheartedness and gravitas. There are several moments in the book that are hilarious, but when I finished the book, I knew I had read something profound. This is a book that everyone should read."
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